Physiologically based kinetic modelling based prediction of in vivo rat and human acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition upon exposure to diazinon

The present study predicts in vivo human and rat red blood cell (RBC) acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition upon diazinon (DZN) exposure using physiological based kinetic (PBK) modelling-facilitated reverse dosimetry. Due to the fact that both DZN and its oxon metabolite diazoxon (DZO) can inhibit AChE, a toxic equivalency factor (TEF) was included in the PBK model to combine the effect of DZN and DZO when predicting in vivo AChE inhibition. The PBK models were defined based on kinetic constants derived from in vitro incubations with liver fractions or plasma of rat and human, and were used to translate in vitro concentration–response curves for AChE inhibition obtained in the current study to predicted in vivo dose–response curves. The predicted dose–response curves for rat matched available in vivo data on AChE inhibition, and the benchmark dose lower confidence limits for 10% inhibition (BMDL(10) values) were in line with the reported BMDL(10) values. Humans were predicted to be 6-fold more sensitive than rats in terms of AChE inhibition, mainly because of inter-species differences in toxicokinetics. It is concluded that the TEF-coded DZN PBK model combined with quantitative in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (QIVIVE) provides an adequate approach to predict RBC AChE inhibition upon acute oral DZN exposure, and can provide an alternative testing strategy for derivation of a point of departure (POD) in risk assessment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00204-021-03015-1.